biden – Hot Airhttp://hotair.com
The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast networkSat, 10 Dec 2016 01:41:13 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.116302432Fun: Left wants Senate Dems to confirm Merrick Garland in a three-minute window in January or somethinghttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/07/fun-left-wants-senate-dems-to-confirm-merrick-garland-in-a-three-minute-window-in-january-or-something/
Wed, 07 Dec 2016 22:41:51 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3934971This post is really just an ad to get you to go read Sean Davis’s post at the Federalist, as he’s an expert in Senate procedure and has roughly 37 reasons why this inane idea couldn’t work under the rules of the chamber. To give you a sense of what the left is doing with its time lately during breaks from electoral-college-revolt porn, here’s the argument (as summarized by Davis). Picture it: January 3rd, 2017. The 34 senators who were elected in November are waiting patiently to be sworn in for the new term. But, suddenly — change of plans.

After the 114th Congress expires, but before the 2016 class of senators is sworn into the 115th Congress, there will only be 66 senators. Thirty-four of those senators (32 Democrats and two Independents) would then constitute a majority. Vice President Joe Biden, who under the Constitution also serves as the president of the Senate and may therefore serve as the body’s presiding officer whenever he pleases, would refuse to recognize any motions made by Republicans and would grant the floor to Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). Obama would re-nominate Garland to the Supreme Court, the Senate would immediately take up Durbin’s motion to confirm Garland, and then Democrats would use the nuclear option to ram through Garland’s confirmation with only 34 of 100 duly elected senators voting in the affirmative.

Lotta problems here, as Davis notes. For one thing, since the Senate’s beginning a new term, Obama would need to re-nominate Garland that same day. But there’s a Senate rule that says nominations can’t be taken up on the day they’re introduced without unanimous consent. There’s also a rule that gives a Senator’s presentation of credentials, i.e. the swearing-in of senators, priority over all other business, which suggests that Biden couldn’t properly hold a vote on Garland even if he wanted to while there are 34 newbies standing by waiting to have their oaths administered. Democrats could, in theory, vote to suspend both of those rules, but that requires a two-thirds majority. They don’t have the numbers. And on top of all of that, there’s a basic question of whether the “new” senators actually need to be sworn in before they can take their seats in the chamber or whether they automatically become senators under the Constitution at noon on January 3rd, with the oath of office later administered as a formality. If those 34 automatically take power at noon then the entire argument collapses since at no point would there be a Democratic majority capable of confirming Garland.

The more fun part of this, though, is gaming out ways the GOP could and would retaliate if Democrats really did have a way, and the will, to pull this off. The most obvious remedy is impeaching Garland for having been improperly confirmed. (That in itself would be dubious since justices are supposed to hold their seat during “good behavior” and Garland himself wouldn’t have done anything wrong. But if Democrats are going to play loose with the rules in confirming, the GOP could play loose in unseating him.) That would be no problem in the House, as Republicans have a majority there, but removal from the bench requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Could McConnell cajole/threaten 15 Democrats into agreeing with the GOP that Garland’s confirmation was bogus? Probably not: If all 34 Dems/independents from the previous Senate had already voted to confirm him on January 3rd, that would leave just 14 persuadable Democrats in the “new” Senate. That’s not enough, even if McConnell convinced all of them to flip. The impeachment vote would fail and Garland would be on the bench. Unless, of course, he did the honorable thing and simply resigned his seat immediately rather than continue to hold it under a cloud.

The next move, presumably, would be to try to undo the Democrats’ new advantage on the Supreme Court by adding two new seats, both appointed by Trump, and turning SCOTUS into an 11-member bench. Court-packing plans typically don’t work out politically but the GOP would have a solid argument that all they were doing in this case is reclaiming an advantage that was theirs by right after the election. Just to make it extra painful for the left, Trump could choose two fortysomething nominees to try to ensure extra-long Republican control of the Court. But that would hit a snag too: McConnell would have to nuke the entire filibuster in order to prevent Senate Dems from filibustering the new bill expanding SCOTUS to 11 seats. Senate traditionalists wouldn’t like that, but an outraged Republican base would demand it. And the GOP leadership might be angry enough at the Democrats’ chicanery that they’d support getting rid of the filibuster for the rest of the term purely as punishment, with a promise to bring it back in 2019. The GOP would get a lot done over the next two years under those circumstances, starting with a fast-tracked ObamaCare replacement bill.

The real reason this plan would fail politically, though, in addition to Davis’s reasons for why it would fail procedurally, is the identities of those 34 Democrats who are supposedly going to confirm Garland on January 3rd. A huge chunk of those people are facing tough elections in 2018 in states won by Trump. There’s Jon Tester in Montana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, and Bill Nelson in Florida. Even liberals like Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown in Ohio would need to think carefully about voting to “steal” Trump’s right to appoint the next justice from him. All McConnell would need to do to defeat a 34/32 confirmation vote for Garland is flip two of those nine Democrats, replete with threats of Trump personally campaigning against them in 2018 if they don’t play ball. Could he get two from that group, bearing in mind that Manchin and Heitkamp have already been floated for cabinet positions in Trump’s administration? Yeah. He could get two.

]]>3934971Live thread: Obama speaks about Trump victory at 12:15; Update: Video addedhttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/11/09/live-thread-obama-speaks-about-trump-victory-at-1215/
Wed, 09 Nov 2016 17:01:57 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3931079A moment of schadenfreudean fun for the entire American right, pro-Trump or anti. I’ll bet there were some dark hours at the White House last night with O wondering if maybe he should have skipped those Trump jokes at the 2011 Correspondents Dinner after all.

We’re going to hear a lot here about the “peaceful transition of power” and respecting the choice of the people, etc. Things will get interesting, assuming he takes questions, when he’s inevitably asked whether he still believes what he said, um, two days ago about Trump being grossly unfit to hold the office. My guess is he’ll say that the past is the past, he’s made his feelings clear, but the people have spoken and now it’s time to work together for the good of the country. He’s already invited Trump to the White House after all, which should preempt an awkward question about whether he really plans to be in the same room as the Birther-in-Chief. Being the big man here isn’t just the right option, it’s the only option.

But then he’s going to get a tougher question: Doesn’t Trump’s victory … utterly destroy your political legacy? This guy took office with both houses of Congress in Democratic hands and he’ll leave with Republicans in complete control of government and having made major gains nationwide at the state level. That’s some report card. Ben Domenech:

Make no mistake about it: this election is Barack Obama’s legacy. He pushed hard for Hillary Clinton in the end because he understood that as such. And it was all for naught. No celebrity, no sports star, and no current president with a strong approval rating was enough to drag Hillary Clinton over the finish line. What did Obama say? What epithets did he utter? And on what did he blame the result? Schadenfreude has always been part of the case for Trump, and it is particularly sharp when it comes to the feelings of the current chief executive…

What is clear is this: Donald Trump is the man Americans have chosen as their vehicle for the dramatic change they demand from Washington. They have utterly rejected the change offered in the eight year Barack Obama agenda as wholly insufficient. And they have given Trump the rare gift of a united government in order to make those changes happen. They have tossed aside the assumptions of an elite class of gatekeepers and commentators whose opinions they disrespect and disavow. And they have sent a message to Washington that nothing less than wholesale change will satisfy them, including a change in the fundamental character of the commander in chief.

As a believer in constitutional limited government, this is an electoral result I find hopeful for more reason than one.

I am … not as hopeful on that last point, but the rest is true enough. Read this insightful critique by Robert Tracinski, also writing at the Federalist today, of the many ways Obama laid the groundwork for Trump’s upset, starting with the fact that he and his courtiers in the Democratic establishment clearly preferred a weak, damaged candidate like Clinton from the beginning. That might have choked off opportunities for more electable Democrats — starting with Joe Biden. Also, what does O say today when he’s asked whether the economic recovery he’s touted for eight years simply hasn’t showed up strongly enough for the working class he claims to care so much about? I think he’ll actually seize on that as a core reason for Clinton’s defeat, if only because it’ll spare him from having to confront the possibility that the liberal cultural preferences he favors ended up alienating the broader country and spurring an electoral backlash. He and the left are heavily invested in the idea that they’re on the “right side” of history; better for him to acknowledge that he didn’t get the job done economically, and that the fabled bitter-clingers rewarded Trump for that, than admit that maybe history doesn’t have sides after all. (The bitter-clinger remarks in 2008 were about small-town Pennsylvanians, remember, exactly the cohort that defeated Hillary last night.) We’ll know soon.

Oh, one more question for O this a.m.: How does it feel to know that ObamaCare will soon be repealed and replaced? His facial reaction alone when a reporter ends up asking that is a reason to tune in.

Update: He was indeed the big man. No hard questions for him, though — yet.

]]>3931079Joe Biden: I wish Trump and I were in high school so I could beat his ass for those “Access Hollywood” commentshttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/21/joe-biden-wish-trump-high-school-beat-ass-access-hollywood-comments/
Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:01:16 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3928228A haunting reminder after a long week and a much longer campaign that, as weird as 2016 has been, it could have gotten really weird if Biden had challenged Hillary in the primary and won. It’s also a reminder of how much better he is as a communicator than Clinton, although in this case that’s partly a matter of circumstance. Hillary can’t get too indignant with Trump about the tape or the sexual-assault accusations because she knows the comeback that’s waiting for her: What about Juanita Broaddrick? So those attacks on Trump get farmed out to Barack and Michelle Obama or other surrogates with cleaner hands — like Biden. He would have gone after Trump hammer and tongs over this if he were the Democratic nominee. Or, come to think of it, maybe he wouldn’t have. He’d be up 12-15 points by now; there’d be no need to air Trump’s dirty laundry.

Needless to say, had Trump himself threatened to beat someone up, even for a righteous reason, the media would have spent the day attacking him for “mainstreaming violence” or whatever.

In related thank-God-it’s-almost-over news, Michael Moore told Rolling Stone that Trump supporters are “legal terrorists” because they’re voting for a guy who wants to “blow up the system.” Total stories expected next week criticizing him for contributing to a “climate of hate” and demagoging peaceful voters: Zero.

]]>3928228Sunday morning talking headshttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/16/sunday-morning-talking-heads-33/
Sun, 16 Oct 2016 12:01:43 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3927176Give Mike Pence credit for facing the fire this morning. After a week of seamy allegations about sexual assault and Trump goofing on his accusers’ looks, it’d be easy for Pence to beg off appearing on the Sunday shows and farm this clean-up job out to lesser surrogates like Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. Instead, as of Saturday afternoon, he’s booked for “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation,” and “Fox News Sunday.” Chuck Todd et al. are going to come right at him for what he said Friday morning about forthcoming evidence that would debunk some of the charges against Trump. Is … this guy’s story the evidence he had in mind? Or, more likely, did the campaign assure Pence early Friday that they had something cooking that would impeach Trump’s accuser without telling him specifically what it was? Now he has to go out there and vouch for Gilberthorpe’s credibility. Oh well. He bought the ticket. Take the ride.

Giuliani and Gingrich are booked too this morning, for “State of the Union” and “This Week,” respectively. For Democrats, it’s VPs present and possibly future: Joe Biden will follow Pence on “Meet the Press” while Tim Kaine is set for “This Week,” “Face the Nation,” and “Fox News Sunday.” A conspicuous omission this morning is Kellyanne Conway. You would think, after a week like this, the campaign would want its most prominent and likable woman surrogate out there helping to put out the fire. Maybe she’ll be a late addition to the schedule. The full line-up is at the AP.

]]>3927176Dem convention, night three: Who’s up for 45 minutes of “that’s not who we are”?http://hotair.com/archives/2016/07/27/dem-convention-night-three-whos-up-for-45-minutes-of-thats-not-who-we-are/
Wed, 27 Jul 2016 23:01:23 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3915146Tonight is a bookend for Hopenchange twice over. It’s a bookend to Trump’s rise politically during the Age of Obama, at least if you believe the armchair psychologists who say O’s 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner speech goofing on Trump lit a fire under him to earn the respect of the political class. Obama was the one who unwittingly baited Trump into running for president; now he has to help drag Hillary over the finish line to prevent him from winning. In a larger sense, this is a bookend to Obama’s entire career as a national figure, which began in earnest with his speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention. That was his first attempt to define who Americans really are — not red states or blue states, he insisted, but United States. Twelve years later whatever unity there was at the time is all but gone, yet count on O to return to his favorite theme tonight and try to scold Americans into dumping Trump. He’s on the wrong side of history, his politics is “not who we are” — you’ve heard this song a thousand times and all it’s done so far is produce a Trump/Clinton election. But Obama will never give up on his heartfelt belief that if he can just explain to people how backward they’re being, they’ll come around. Perfect approach during a populist political climate, don’t you agree?

Actually, given free rein, I think Obama would prefer to vent his contempt for Trump at length rather than doing his “better angels of our nature” shtick, but that would probably backfire in being seen as unpresidential. O is an asset for Clinton right now because of his rising job approval and Hillary has a thousand other Democrats willing and able to attack Trump on her behalf. What she needs from Obama is help persuading the Bernie fans and minority voters who turned out for O but might not turn out for her to go to the polls this fall. Expect a heavy emphasis tonight from him that Hopenchange will all have been for naught if Clinton isn’t elected to protect his legacy. If anyone’s going to knife Trump tonight, especially over his game of footsie with Putin, it’ll be Biden. He’ll speak directly before O during the 10 p.m. hour. It’ll be a good cop/bad cop routine with Officer Joe punching Trump repeatedly before Sergeant Barack strolls in and tells everyone with a straight face that American greatness can only be achieved by electing Hillary Clinton, of all people, as president. To repeat my weeklong prediction: No convention bounce for Herself. We’ll see. Here’s your Twitter widget for real-time commentary from the Hot Air crew.

]]>3915146Audio: Chuck Schumer has no idea how to spin what Biden said about blocking election-year SCOTUS nomineeshttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/23/audio-chuck-schumer-has-no-idea-how-to-spin-what-biden-said-about-blocking-election-year-scotus-nominees/
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:01:53 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3894730I’ll give you the quote but you should really listen to the clip, as it’s short and oh so sweet. How often does this guy get caught by reporters with nothing coherent to say in his or his party’s defense? I thought he’d at least try arguing that Biden said what he said in June 1992 whereas Scalia’s vacancy opened up in February of this year and that makes all the difference somehow even though it actually makes no difference at all, but he doesn’t even fart out that excuse. All he can say to the fact that Obama, Biden, Harry Reid, and he himself have supported blocking SCOTUS nominees in the past is, essentially, that the Senate should do what Democrats want now whether or not it grossly contradicts what the entire Democratic leadership wanted in the past.

“Look, the simple answer to this, which everyone is saying everywhere is, ‘Do your job.’ It doesn’t matter what anybody said in the past. Do your job. It’s working,” Schumer said. He claims he had not seen Biden’s exact statement but when pressed about it, he repeated, “We should do our job.”

The Daily Caller asked Schumer about his past statement in regards to blocking George W. Bush nominees in Bush’s final year and Schumer only repeated, “We should do our job.” TheDC asked Schumer if his stance was hypocritical, and he fell silent and left on a Senate train.

Translation: “F*** you, that’s why.” The question is, is the Biden clip enough to placate voters who prefer to have Scalia’s replacement appointed this year rather than next? The GOP’s running a smart messaging strategy right now (for once) by trying to frame this argument as a battle over whether the people should decide who fills the vacancy with their votes this fall or a lame-duck president should. But that’s not an altogether easy sell. If you believe PPP, 58 percent in Ohio and 57 percent in Pennsylvania think Scalia’s seat should be filled this year. The numbers among independents are much higher, and 52 percent in both states say they’re less likely to vote for a senator this year — namely, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey — who refuses to confirm a new nominee sight unseen. If, on the other hand, you don’t believe PPP because they’re a left-leaning poll firm whose methodology has been challenged in the past, would you believe Pew?

Interesting, but how many voters who’d otherwise be inclined to vote Republican will vote Democratic this year to punish the GOP for obstructing the nominee knowing that that makes it more likely that their less favored party will get to appoint Scalia’s replacement? If you prefer a more conservative Supreme Court, it’d be the height of stupidity to vote for Hillary Clinton or a Democratic Senate in order to punish Pat Toomey or Rob Portman for refusing to let Obama make the appointment. The only risk is alienating truly centrist independents, and it’s hard for me to imagine Republican obstruction being a decisive factor for them in an election between two personalities as big as Hillary and Trump. You like Trump but Toomey pissed you off so you’re going to send the Clintons back to the White House instead? C’mon. Unless there’s an epidemic of ballot-splitting, blocking the nominee isn’t going to turn any states one color or the other.

Besides, Roll Call makes a good point. Obama’s certainly going to nominate someone for the seat and it’ll probably be someone who’s a bit more centrist, like Sri Srinivasan, in order to make the politics of this tougher for Republicans. If the GOP suffers a bloodbath in November, there’s an obvious move for them to make:

If it gets to be Nov. 9, and the White House or the Senate have been won by the Democrats, the Republicans could decide to confirm any reasonably mainstream center-left Obama pick as the bird-in-the-hand alternative to whomever the new president might choose or the next senatorial majority might accept.

They could confirm Srinivasan in the lame-duck session on the theory that whoever Hillary nominates, fresh off a Democratic victory and with more Democrats in the Senate next year, can only be worse. Obama could withdraw the nomination and deny them that opportunity, of course, but who knows if he would. I’m sure he’d like to make a third SCOTUS appointment rather than leave it to Hillary, and it’d feel like a betrayal of Srinivasan to yank him out of contention just as there’s a real possibility that he might be confirmed. Maybe Democrats would insist, claiming that the people had spoken and that it was now Hillary’s appointment to make (and, after all, she could always re-nominate Srinivasan herself). The prospect of a much more liberal Court would be enticing to them. But Obama wouldn’t need to play ball. In the end, if he stands by his man, the GOP Senate could confirm him at the end of the year. I’d say there’s a healthy chance that Obama lets them.

Mitch McConnell is still talking tough about rejecting Obama’s nominee without consideration. Will that last?

]]>3894730Breaking: Biden to make statement at White House imminently; Update: Not runninghttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/21/breaking-biden-to-make-statement-at-white-house-imminently/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/21/breaking-biden-to-make-statement-at-white-house-imminently/#commentsWed, 21 Oct 2015 16:09:34 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3881206This is it. I’ve got to believe he’s not running. He wouldn’t use the White House as a campaign prop, right?

Stand by for updates.

BREAKING: Vice President to make statement at White House at 12:10p ET

That sure is a sudden turnaround in the span of a week. Every report I’ve seen in the last few days, most notably this one from Fox News claiming that he was about to jump in, said he was a go. Maybe he changed his mind at the last second? But why?

Update: Biden announces he’s not running. With him goes any mystery about who the Democratic nominee will be.

Update: He says the window has closed on running a winning campaign, which you can interpret as either (a) an acknowledgment that Hillary did well enough at the debate last week to make a Biden candidacy superfluous to centrist Dems or (b) an admission that he simply dragged his feet too long in deciding whether to get in. Hard to believe an old pro like Biden with plenty of aides might have been at risk of missing any key deadlines, but there were a lot of them — and coming to grips with the sheer logistical challenge of running this light might explain Biden’s apparent last-minute decision not to run. Maybe he was inclined to jump in and then sobered up once he realized how much work was still left to do just to qualify for the ballot. Hard to believe, but I don’t know why the rumors of a candidacy would be so wrong otherwise.

Update: For an “I’m not running” speech, he sure did go on and on at the podium — and sounded a lot like a candidate in doing so. I think this is more of an “I’m not running, unless” speech, actually: Just in case the DOJ shocks the world by indicting Hillary or another scandal blows up in her face, Biden’s letting Democrats know that he’s a solid Plan B. In case of emergency, break glass and vote Joe.

Update: Pretty much.

What you're hearing is a guy who thinks that of the pack he'd be the best president but knows he has no path to it

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/21/breaking-biden-to-make-statement-at-white-house-imminently/feed/2933881206Biden takes a shot at Hillary: “I don’t think my chief enemy is the Republican Party”http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/20/biden-takes-a-shot-at-hillary-i-dont-think-my-chief-enemy-is-the-republican-party/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/20/biden-takes-a-shot-at-hillary-i-dont-think-my-chief-enemy-is-the-republican-party/#commentsTue, 20 Oct 2015 18:01:19 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3881087Via Jeff Dunetz, I’d rate this half-true. On the one hand, Biden is reputedly cordial with Republicans and has traditionally been the guy dispatched by Obama to Capitol Hill whenever the White House needs a liaison to Mitch McConnell. On the other hand, if this is how he treats his friends, what does he do to his actual enemies?

Let’s not overthink it, though. This remark is obviously a rejoinder to Hillary’s stupid reply at last week’s debate when asked which enemy she’s proudest to have made. Biden’s positioning himself contra Clinton as someone with enough goodwill among congressional Republicans to make compromises happen as president. Which, actually, I think is true. If you want the parties to work together, you’ve got a better shot with President Biden than with President Herself.

My impression is that right now, the Democratic electorate believes that Republicans are intransigent, that they cannot be worked with, and that Obama’s presidency was at its weakest when he tried to deal with GOP leaders in Congress. They thought he caved into Republican hostage takers with the debt limit deal, that he extended too many of the Bush tax cuts, and that he wasn’t assertive enough in pushing for more stimulus. They were happiest with Obama’s presidency when he drew a line in the sand in dealing with Republicans and began taking more aggressive executive actions.

Right now, as I wrote in my latest column, liberals believe that the demographics of the nation have changed to the point at which the country is moving much closer to them ideologically, and thus, they are not in a mood to compromise.

Could be, but I don’t know that Biden and Clinton are really competing for the left-wing vote. The bulk of Sanders’s voters are going to hang with him for awhile. Biden’s aiming for the mass of Democrats in the middle who prefer Hillary to the hard-left guy but might very well be open to an alternative who seems like he could broker a grand bargain or two with the GOP. What Biden’s saying here, as I understand it, isn’t that he’s going to cave to Republicans so much as he’s going to break the culture of obstructionism by building on relationships that Obama never managed to establish. If that tactic works, he becomes the centrist choice in the primaries while Sanders remains the left-wing choice. You know who is left out in the cold.

This wasn’t the only shot he took at Hillary today either, claiming that she was far less decisive than she now purports to be about the Bin Laden raid. Which is interesting, because Biden’s own personal history of where he stood about that operation has since changed.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/20/biden-takes-a-shot-at-hillary-i-dont-think-my-chief-enemy-is-the-republican-party/feed/443881087Sources reportedly tell Fox News: Biden’s runninghttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/19/sources-reportedly-tell-fox-news-bidens-running/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/19/sources-reportedly-tell-fox-news-bidens-running/#commentsMon, 19 Oct 2015 16:41:37 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3880916Next time you hear the commentariat pronounce Trump’s campaign dead or a Rubio surge about to begin, etc, remember that these same people, almost to a man, declared after Tuesday’s night debate that Hillary’s commanding performance almost certainly guaranteed that Biden would now pass on the race.

Sources tell FOX News Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry that Vice President Joe Biden will enter the presidential race. There has been heavy speculation that Biden would run for the Democratic nomination. It was unclear, however, if he would be willing to endure the campaign trail following the death of his son earlier this year.

Boyle’s a freshman in Congress but it’s not crazy to think he might have a source close to Biden. He represents a district in Philadelphia, which means he moves in some of the same Democratic political circles as Delaware’s favorite son. Good catch by Charlie Spiering too: Boyle won his seat in Congress by defeating Marjorie Margolies in the Democratic primary of his district last year. Marjorie Margolies happens to be Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law. If there’s a pro-Biden, anti-Clinton faction in the Democratic caucus, it stands to reason he’s part of it.

We should know soon.

BREAKING: Joe Biden to announce whether he is running for president in 2016 or not in the next 48 hours, sources tell @NBCNews.

Why is there suddenly so much chatter about this week? Partly it’s a “sh*t or get off the pot” thing after so many teases over the past two months, but reportedly Team Biden thinks he can’t afford to pass on the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner this coming Saturday. That’s where Obama made his first big splash in 2007; two months later, he went on to win the caucuses. Biden could afford to skip the debate last week knowing that there’d be more to come, but this is his last, best opportunity to electrify Iowans who dislike Hillary but aren’t sold on Sanders. For once, the Biden whispers aren’t idle speculation. If he is running, we really should know this week.

Big question, then: Why is he getting in now after Hillary had such a strong debate? You could understand him jumping in if she’d been terrible, creating a vacuum on the center-left, but if anything she gave wavering Dems a reason to have new confidence in her. And yet he’s undeterred. How come? I’d bet it has to do with Bernie Sanders’s ferocious whiff on Hillary’s e-mail scandal. If Sanders had come after her hard on that, it would have proved that he was prepared to run a “good government versus corrupt establishment” race. The fact that he passed suggests that he’s trying to move Hillary to the left, not win the race himself — which means the “good government crusader” role is now Biden’s for the taking. It also means that the primary could end up being extraordinarily nasty. More so than any policy differences between them, the crux of Biden’s message will necessarily be that we can’t trust Hillary with power, to which she’ll respond by trotting out Biden’s old plagiarism scandals, his many dubious verbal gaffes, etc. Somehow we’re going to end up with a race between two people with something like 70 years of Washington experience between them arguing over which of them is the true voice of populist discontent with Washington sleaze. Can’t wait.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/19/sources-reportedly-tell-fox-news-bidens-running/feed/1293880916First ad from “Draft Biden” PAC is about, yes, personal tragedyhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/07/first-ad-from-draft-biden-pac-is-about-yes-personal-tragedy/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/07/first-ad-from-draft-biden-pac-is-about-yes-personal-tragedy/#commentsWed, 07 Oct 2015 19:21:21 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3879758No, not that personal tragedy. His other personal tragedy. Despite 35 years in the Senate and seven more as VP, this is the very first thing his biggest fans want low-information voters to know about him. I wonder if Biden quietly signed off on this just like he quietly leaked that “do it for Beau” anecdote to Dowd.

But … it’s a good ad, no? However crass you may find this “He’s suffered enough so let’s make him president” campaign pitch, it’s a superb contrast with the RoboClinton. This is exactly the sort of thing the public likes about Biden and doesn’t see in her — warmth, humanity, relatability. Emphasizing his record against hers is silly given that each of them have the same credentials for the top job, namely, having served in the Senate and then ended up in the cabinet of the same Democratic president. They’re both old, have been in Washington for decades, and come from a more centrist wing of the party than Bernie Sanders does. They both have endless connections among fatcat donors and operatives. There are only two sharp contrasts between them: Hillary would be the First! Woman! President! and Biden is a recognizably human human being. That’s your choice if you’re an undecided Democrat. Pat yourself on the back for shattering the glass ceiling by sending a crook to the White House or savor all the feels by sending an underwhelming presidential retread there to ease his grief instead. Makes the GOP voter’s “to Trump or not to Trump?” dilemma seem less bad, doesn’t it?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/07/first-ad-from-draft-biden-pac-is-about-yes-personal-tragedy/feed/483879758Poll: Biden now the choice of one in four Democrats, within eight points of Hillary in three-way race with Sandershttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/23/poll-biden-now-the-choice-of-one-in-four-democrats-within-eight-points-of-hillary-in-three-way-race-with-sanders/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/23/poll-biden-now-the-choice-of-one-in-four-democrats-within-eight-points-of-hillary-in-three-way-race-with-sanders/#commentsWed, 23 Sep 2015 16:01:36 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3878004How long do you think it’ll take once he’s in the race for him to pass Hillary in the national polls? Three weeks, maybe? Combine the initial post-announcement bounce with a few early ads here and there with the sympathetic media coverage he’ll get in light of his son’s death and he’s a lock to be the frontrunner by Thanksgiving.

Clinton, once the prohibitive front-runner, is now the top choice of 33 percent of registered Democrats and those who lean Democrat, the poll shows. Biden places second with 25 percent and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is at 24 percent…

Adding to the good news for the vice president: His favorability ratings are on the rise. Since the last Bloomberg poll in April, Clinton’s favorability ratings have dropped 10 points, from 48 percent to 38 percent. Biden’s 49 percent favorable score represents a 3-point uptick. He was the only one of a dozen national political figures and entities whose approval rating improved over the summer…

A closer look at the sample of the Democrat and Democrat-leaning poll respondents shows that nationally, Clinton is better liked by women than men—74 percent to 64 percent—while Biden’s favorability is closer to gender-neutral, with 81 percent for women and 79 percent for men. The survey also found those who are married or have children under the age of 18 were more likely to give Biden favorable ratings than Clinton.

Those gender splits are interesting. Hillary has a considerable lead over Sanders among women, 35 percent to 20, but Biden’s favorables are better than hers among both sexes. Is that because he isn’t a candidate yet and hasn’t taken any shots, either from the media or the other candidates, or is it just Biden’s vastly greater personal likability at work?

Tom Bevan noted on Twitter that the trend lines for Her Majesty across various polls are headed straight into the toilet:

Here’s the money question: Is Sanders’s support truly support for him and his policies or is it mostly just “Anyone But Hillary” sentiment? If you think it’s the latter then she’s doomed once Biden gets in. He’ll siphon off most of the Sanders fans, being a much better known pol, and bounce out to a comfortable lead. Add Biden’s total in this poll to the other three candidates’ (Sanders, Webb, and O’Malley) and you’ve got 52 percent who prefer a nominee other than Hillary. I tend to think Sandersmania is for real, though. Biden will pull some of his votes — Berniepalooza only gained a foothold in the first place this year because some Dems wanted an alternative to Clinton — but he’ll still be the purest leftist in the race once Biden is in. If you’re a committed liberal, there’s no reason to peel off from him for Biden — yet. I think we’ll end up with a reasonably tight race for the rest of the year, with some Sanders fans grudgingly shifting to Biden shortly before Iowa and New Hampshire in the name of choosing the least bad viable alternative.

Exit question: Will Biden’s comments about abortion being “always wrong” reduce his competitiveness with Hillary among women? His record is solidly pro-choice but maybe his Senate votes won’t be enough to quell suspicions among feminists that he’d be weaker on the issue in office than Clinton, especially with Team Hillary flogging “war on women” nonsense during the primaries. It’d be like a Republican candidate voting consistently for gun rights in the Senate but declaring that he personally thinks owning a gun is wrong. Would you trust that guy as president to be a staunch defender of the Second Amendment?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/23/poll-biden-now-the-choice-of-one-in-four-democrats-within-eight-points-of-hillary-in-three-way-race-with-sanders/feed/483878004Draft Biden operative overheard on Amtrak: I’m “100 percent” sure that Joe is inhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/17/draft-biden-operative-overheard-on-amtrak-im-100-percent-sure-that-joe-is-in/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/17/draft-biden-operative-overheard-on-amtrak-im-100-percent-sure-that-joe-is-in/#commentsThu, 17 Sep 2015 20:41:06 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3877398I trust that he said it, I just want to know why he said it. Why would a guy who knows the answer to the hottest question in politics be blabbing about it within earshot of a carful of politically-savvy Acela-corridor passengers? Granted, that sounds exactly like something Joe Biden himself would do, but the people around him are supposed to be less … Biden-ish than Diamond Joe is.

This sounds suspiciously like something a prospective staffer would say to a donor to get him to keep his powder dry for the time being whether it’s true or not. That is, Alcorn’s probably worried (and rightly so) that Team Hillary is twisting arms behind the scenes to get wealthy Democrats to sign up with her ASAP in hopes of discouraging Biden from jumping in. Some of them may even be calling Alcorn up and demanding to know what Biden’s status is now that the Clintons are breathing down their necks. What’s Alcorn supposed to say in reply? “He’s not sure yet”? Gotta do something to keep them on the hook just in case Joe decides to go for it.

When Josh Alcorn joined the Draft Biden super PAC, MSNBC headlined its story on the move “Draft Biden just got real.” Alcorn had been finance director and senior adviser to the late Beau Biden, the vice president’s son, and had worked as finance director for Harry Reid as well. Judging from phone conversations Alcorn had on an Amtrak train from New York to Wilmington yesterday, the Biden campaign is about to get still more real.

Another passenger said that Alcorn was being loud enough in the café car to make it hard to work. He said that Alcorn had said on one call, “I am 100 percent that Joe is in.” He was less certain of when Biden would announce, but guessed it would be in mid-October. Alcorn’s own plans to travel to California in early October would have to be canceled if Biden announced earlier…

Alcorn, according to this passenger, was less confident about New Hampshire, which was described as a challenge requiring the deployment of resources. At one point during his calls Alcorn said that the plan was to come in second in Iowa, finish respectably in New Hampshire, and then win Nevada and South Carolina.

Alcorn didn’t deny saying what he was overheard saying when NRO contacted him, although another Draft Biden staffer insisted there was no way Alcorn could know Biden’s plans since he works for a PAC and, of course, PACs never secretly have contact with the candidates they’re backing. It’s against the law ‘n stuff! As for my own theory of what Alcorn was up to, are there still enough Democratic moneybags out there to make Biden 2016 a thing even though Hillary’s been in the race, snapping up donors, for months? According to the WSJ, why yes, there are:

Vice President Joe Biden’s aides and supporters have intensified efforts in recent days to create a campaign-in-waiting, developing more detailed plans for staffing, fundraising and organizing as they prepare for a possible 2016 presidential bid…

James Smith, a South Carolina legislator and a longtime Biden supporter, said the efforts in his state have expanded from securing endorsements to building a “turnkey operation” that could quickly shift to campaign mode…

An analysis of Democratic donors and bundlers in previous elections suggests there is a deep pool of well-heeled donors still casting about for a candidate. Of the roughly 335,000 donors who gave at least $200 to Mr. Obama or the Democratic National Committee during the 2012 and 2014 election cycles, 96% hadn’t yet made a donation in the 2016 race as of the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, according to Crowdpac, a nonpartisan group that analyzes campaign filings.

I think that’s what Alcorn was most likely up to with the “100 percent” bit, ensuring that donors are in place if and when Biden decides to turn the key. Alternately, maybe Diamond Joe really has already made up his mind and his display on Colbert’s show last week about being too consumed with grief to have fully thought things through yet was a smart but cynical bid to build media buzz for his big announcement. Frankly, Biden’s better off lying low for now. Why get in at a moment when Hillary’s polls are still sinking from the e-mail scandal? Leave her to twist in the wind for a few weeks more, then swoop in as the conquering hero.

Speaking of which, here’s Hillarybot version 6.0 displaying her new “heart and humor” app on Jimmy Fallon’s show last night. Trump was on the show last week and played along in a funny bit at his own expense. Here you’ll find Hillary playing along in a funny bit at, er, Trump’s expense.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/17/draft-biden-operative-overheard-on-amtrak-im-100-percent-sure-that-joe-is-in/feed/263877398Kiss of death for Hillary? Obama reportedly gives Biden his blessing to run for presidenthttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/25/kiss-of-death-for-hillary-obama-reportedly-gives-biden-his-blessing-to-run-for-president/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/25/kiss-of-death-for-hillary-obama-reportedly-gives-biden-his-blessing-to-run-for-president/#commentsTue, 25 Aug 2015 20:41:03 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3874795A leftover from last night that shouldn’t go unremarked upon. If it seems weird to you that Biden, the sitting VP and a guy who began serving in the Senate when Barack Obama was all of 11 years old, would need The One’s “blessing” to make a run at the big prize, it … seems weird to me too. But there was a chance, I guess, that O, as the head of the party, would tell Biden that Hillary’s their best bet at the nomination and that he’d push strenuously behind the scenes for Democratic donors and operatives to unite behind her if Biden jumped in. He couldn’t stop Biden from running, but he could make it so difficult for him that it wouldn’t be worth doing.

Obama, very interestingly, apparently gave no indication that he’d stand in Biden’s way. The question is why.

Vice President Joe Biden received President Barack Obama’s “blessing” to make a 2016 bid for the White House, according to a senior Democrat…

The Vice President was expected to huddle at his home Monday night with Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer, the husband-and-wife team who have been at Obama’s side for much of the last decade, two people familiar with the meeting told CNN. Steve Ricchetti, the Vice President’s chief of staff, was also expected to attend…

Dunn and Bauer would be a high-profile addition to any potential campaign, and could send a signal to other Democrats that they should join Biden’s effort. It is not known if they would ultimately work for Biden if he does enter the race.

Again, the question is why. The most innocuous explanation is pure personal affection. Biden’s a bereaved dad and he’s been a loyal soldier for Obama. This is his last shot to run for president. No matter how many misgivings Obama and his team have about candidate Joe, O owed it to him as a friend not to interfere with his candidacy. It’s no reflection on Hillary, just kindness at work. Another explanation is that the Biden/Warren rumors are true and Obama sees that as a better bet for the future of the party than Hillary/Whoever. Warren would steer the party towards the type of liberalism that Obama sympathizes with; Biden, as I argued yesterday, would be a bridge from his administration to hers. Biden would also be a more loyal keeper of Obama’s legacy than Hillary would be, since she’s already tied to another Democratic president. If O’s worried about a Dem successor undoing some of his policies, especially his foreign policy, he’s better off with the faithful administration soldier than with Clinton.

The President is enough of a cold-blooded politician to know that a considerable part of his legacy will depend on whether a Democrat succeeds him in the Oval Office. Above personal feelings, he wants a Democratic nominee who can win in 2016.

Mr. Biden ran for President in 1988 and 2008 and lost, so why would he be a better candidate now? The Veep would be starting late, and most Democratic officeholders and donors are already committed to Hillary and Bill. Mr. Biden might figure he can run as a more authentic tribune of the middle class, but Bernie Sanders has a head start running as the economic populist. On paper at least, Mr. Biden would still be a long shot to defeat the Clinton machine.

Which leads us to wonder what Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama know about Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information on her personal email server while running the State Department. The FBI is now investigating, and it’s hard to believe the White House wouldn’t have some inkling about the seriousness of that probe.

Even if you think the FBI wouldn’t tip the White House to its findings, it may be that one of Hillary’s own insiders has some idea of what’s on the server and has tipped Obama to it. I remember reading after the 2008 primaries that members of John Edwards’s staff had somehow figured out what was going on with Rielle Hunter while the campaign was in full swing, creating a conundrum for them. Should they keep quiet out of loyalty to their candidate, knowing that leaking the info would destroy his campaign? Or should they speak up out of loyalty to their party, knowing that if he won the nomination and the scandal came out later, it might destroy Democrats’ chances to win the presidency? There may be someone in Hillary’s orbit who’s struggled with that same dilemma and opted for loyalty to the party, whispering to party elders that Emailgate’s going to get worse and that they’d better get cracking on a presidential plan B. (Then again, aren’t Hillary insiders known for their fanatic loyalty and excruciating sycophancy? Who would dare betray Herself by trying to entice Biden into the race?) Or maybe we’re overthinking this: Maybe no one’s leaked anything to the White House about what Hillary’s server contains and Obama’s simply acting upon his own judgment here. “Is it likely,” he’d ask himself, “that Hillary Clinton is a corrupt imbecile who’d put state secrets at risk for no better reason than to keep her e-mail correspondence away from the prying eyes of State Department archivists?” That question answers itself. Enter Biden.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/25/kiss-of-death-for-hillary-obama-reportedly-gives-biden-his-blessing-to-run-for-president/feed/843874795Are you ready for a Biden/Warren ticket?http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/24/are-you-ready-for-a-bidenwarren-ticket/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/24/are-you-ready-for-a-bidenwarren-ticket/#commentsMon, 24 Aug 2015 18:41:37 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3874627Has one meeting between two pols this far out from an election ever produced more presidential speculation than Biden’s, er, powwow with Elizabeth Warren this weekend?

Biden has another card to play in soliciting Warren’s support. He would be 74 years old if he were elected president in 2016, an issue he may have a way of addressing. “One thing that I keep hearing about Biden is that if he were to declare and say, because age is such a problem for him if he does, ‘I want to be a one-term president. I want to serve for four years, unite Washington. I’ve dealt with the Republicans in Congress all my public life,’” liberal journalist Carl Bernstein told CNN this month.

A one-term pledge by Biden would also interest Elizabeth Warren. She is 66 years old, and if a Democrat wins in 2016, she will be 74 herself by the time someone else has served two terms in office — and facing her own age issues. But if Biden won, after pledging to serve only one term, Warren would be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2020. If Biden made her his vice-presidential choice, as Yale’s Professor Kahn and others have suggested, she might be a virtual lock for the Democratic nomination.

Biden has several match-up problems with Hillary — he lacks a “trailblazer” narrative to match her First! Woman! President! shtick, he’s not so popular with the left that he can expect Berniemania-style support, and he’s more susceptible to Obama fatigue among the electorate than Clinton is. (After all, she can always run on Bill’s legacy as needed instead of O’s.) Warren solves all of those problems for him. She represents where liberals want to see the party go; a Biden/Warren ticket would be sold as a de facto bridge from the “old” Democratic Party of Bill and Hillary Clinton to the new one of Elizabeth Warren, with the Obama/Biden years as the transition. Warren, meanwhile, had match-up problems of her own with Hillary as a prospective candidate — Clinton has vastly more experience in government and Clinton might well have been able to marginalize Warren as less a mainstream Democrat than a hero of the lefty fringe. (Then again, how well has that worked out in stopping Bernie Sanders?) Four years as Biden’s apprentice in the White House solves both of those problems and would also earn Warren lots of favors from establishment Dems ahead of her inevitable 2020 run. In short, Warren lends Biden the radical chic he needs to get Democratic voters excited while Biden lends her the establishment credibility she’ll need to succeed him. It’s a no-brainer. And one thing they both have (albeit in different ways), which Hillary emphatically does not, is the ability to woo working-class voters. Remember that Quinnipiac poll I blogged last week showing how impressive Marco Rubio’s numbers were when people were asked if they thought he cares about the problems of people like them? He wasn’t the only pol who tested well in that survey. Biden’s figures:

The last few weeks have seen endless think pieces from conservative writers arguing that the key to stopping Trumpmania is for some more legit Republican candidate to co-opt his populism. That’s exactly what a Biden/Warren ticket would do to Sanders. And that’s extremely dangerous to Hillary, writes Rick Wilson:

If I were Biden’s team, I’d cut a deal right now with Elizabeth Warren promising her two things; the Vice Presidency and full control over Biden’s economic agenda…

[I]t gives the Democratic Party its socialist dream date without having to choose a 70-year-old socialist with a shock of untamed white hair, the sartorial style of a New England community college professor circa 1979, and a grating Brooklyn bellow. Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Party’s id coming out to play, and he reflects the market space that Warren left when she declined to enter the race earlier. There are the Democrats for whom Barack Obama simply hasn’t been ambitious enough in nationalizing the economy, expanding the regulatory state, and generally nannying into every aspect of our private and business lives.

Finally, it completely resets the overall campaign narrative for the Democratic Party. Right now, this would be – as the Clinton team hoped from the beginning – a stunt-casting personality fight between Hillary-as-first-woman-President and her Republican rival. Clinton would have produced the usual panoply of policy word-vomit from her focus groups, but largely run on the First Woman President narrative, not on what she’d actually do. The right words and phrases would be there, but the core progressive base of the Democratic Party and its angry labor constituency would have never believed Hillary’s heart was in it. With Warren, they would.

The lone complication for Warren in all this is that as Democratic presidential victories pile up, the country’s “Democrat fatigue” presumably (hopefully?) grows. If she helps Biden win the White House, how likely is it that voters will be in the mood down the road to turn a 12-year stranglehold on the presidency into one stretching 16 or even 20 years? From the standpoint of pure political self-interest, she’s arguably better off if Biden loses, leaving America supposedly hungry again for Democratic leadership at the start of the next decade. Then again, running against a GOP incumbent in 2020 would be no picnic either. And joining Biden’s ticket and losing next year would still help Warren 2020 a bunch by introducing her to the wider electorate now. Either they win and VP Warren has to figure out how to continue a long Democratic winning streak four years from now, which is a nice problem to have, or they lose and Warren’s easily the frontrunner for the next nomination. Who knows? Maybe we’ll end up down the road with that Warren vs. Cruz election that everyone’s been hoping for.

Here’s Josh Earnest praising Biden at today’s White House briefing. Is this a backhanded shot at Hillary or just standard political palaver?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/24/are-you-ready-for-a-bidenwarren-ticket/feed/1403874627Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/22/quotes-of-the-day-2177/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/22/quotes-of-the-day-2177/#commentsSun, 23 Aug 2015 00:31:04 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3874475Hillary Rodham Clinton had planned to spend the last two weeks of August on vacation, unwinding and fund-raising on the exclusive shores of Long Island. But, as it turns out, this is no time for a vacation.

Amid concerns about Mrs. Clinton’s softening poll numbers and her exclusive use of a personal email server as secretary of state, she will interrupt her Hamptons stay next week to travel to the Midwest and try to shift attention back to her campaign message by unveiling new policy positions…

With questions about Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email persisting — a federal judge said Thursday that the practice did not comply with government policies — and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. considering seeking the Democratic nomination, the late-August doldrums have proven anything but.

***

Compelled by her own carelessness to address the long-simmering scandal, Clinton adopted an air of impertinence. She looked down her nose at the reporters questioning her behavior. She displayed exaggerated body language, shrugging and gesticulating wildly, communicating to journalists that the line of questioning to which she was being subjected was improper. Perhaps most gallingly, when repeatedly asked if she had wiped the server herself, Clinton joked, “with a cloth?” Perhaps knowing that her embellished display of disdain for the process of campaigning for the presidency was not going over well, Clinton abruptly ended her presser almost mid-sentence. But before she retired to the comfort provided by her coterie of flatterers, Clinton bid the press one last discourtesy by turning briefly and throwing her hands up in a shrug on her way out the door.

Even if there were no more shoes to drop in the ongoing saga involving Clinton’s emails, and there will be, it has done possibly irreparable damage to her viability as a presidential candidate. Clinton’s flippant and contemptuous behavior has only made the problem worse.

But the vice president and his closest advisers are also monitoring Mrs. Clinton as she tries to put questions over her use of a private email server while secretary of state behind her. On Thursday, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing troubling signs for Mrs. Clinton in three key states: Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In each state survey, at least 6 in 10 voters said the former secretary of state was not honest and trustworthy. Fewer than 4 in 10 voters in each state held a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton, compared with nearly 6 in 10 who viewed her negatively…

“He’s not unrealistic that if she’s able to right the ship here, at this point it’s tough, really tough, to see a lot of Democrats coming off her,” said one former senior Obama administration official who recently discussed the merits of a campaign with Mr. Biden. “On the other hand, the things with the emails and everything else could deteriorate — who knows? So I think he’s figuring he’s got another month or so to see what happens, to sort of put feelers out there.”

The meeting between Biden and Warren, confirmed by two people familiar with the session, is the biggest indication yet that Biden is feeling out influential Democrats before announcing his intentions.

Beloved by liberal Democrats, Warren decided to sit out a campaign of her own, but she has yet to formally endorse a candidate. In an interview on Friday, she told WBZ in Boston: “I don’t think anyone has been anointed.”

***

Some Hollywood Democrats are flirting with Joe Biden as he mulls a 2016 presidential run while Hillary Clinton’s email scandal gains momentum.

Now that Steven Schale, a former Obama campaign strategist, has joined the Draft Biden 2015 super PAC as an informal adviser, key donors are looking at funding the current Vice President, insiders tell TheWrap…

“I’ve spoke to a lot of people who said to me, ‘Listen, I’ve already given money to Secretary Clinton but I’m not thrilled with her campaign and her lack of trustworthiness. If the Vice President jumps in I’m there,’” Mandel said.

While he won’t name any names, Mandel says many of the people who’ve contacted him are “big donors” with very deep pockets, adding Hollywood money is already making its way to Biden coffers.

A key concern is whether top campaign operatives new to Clinton’s orbit have enough influence in crafting her response to the email controversy. A source with inside knowledge of the Clinton campaign voiced concern that the candidate and her longtime attorney David Kendall are the only ones calling the shots — and can have a tin ear when it comes to the politics, rather than simply the legal status, of the email saga…

“There is definitely concern out there,” said Brock, who also serves on the board of the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA. “In speaking with people, I’ve learned that the qualms go away once they know the facts and the evidence, which most people are not taking the time to sift through.”…

“I get nervous about seeing stories with these words together — FBI, Clinton, criminal investigation,” said another Democratic operative with ties to the campaign. “If there’s anything to be nervous about, it’s that the average voter will remember those words.” Multiple sources said another major concern is what the campaign doesn’t know — what’s in the contents of more than 62,000 emails.

***

Mrs. Clinton has now lost control over events, which is precisely what she was trying to ensure when she created her own homebrew computer system in the first place…

“I can’t tell you how bad this is,” he added. “A lot of things get talked about, a lot of gossip, but having documents like this sent across the Internet, it could be hacked very easily and probably were hacked, is a transgression that I don’t think the president of the United States should be allowed to, you know, have committed.”

Bob Woodward, who knows about such things, said that the Hillary Clinton email scandal “reminds me of the Nixon tapes. Thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his …. Hillary Clinton initially took that position, ‘I’m not turning this over, there’ll be no cooperation.’ Now they’re cooperating. But this has to go on a long, long time, and the answers are probably not going to be pretty.”

***

Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat gaining attention nationwide who isn’t linked to an FBI investigation. Why some Democrats still continue to believe a candidate can win the White House with the Justice Department, FBI, and other intelligence agencies investigating this candidate’s email practices, seems to overlook one obvious fact. Nobody has ever won the White House with an ongoing FBI and Justice Department investigation, and it doesn’t seem that the FBI or Justice Department will cease investigating Clinton’s email saga by Election Day; 444 days away.

Fabricated or real, the scandal exists, and nobody can win the White House with the FBI as a running mate.

***

The Democrats have all their eggs in one basket pretty much: Hillary Clinton’s increasingly basket-case campaign. Clinton is growing more and more testy at news conferences, and her advisers are showing fatigued judgment in preparing questionable talking points like the one she delivered recently about the social media site Snapchat. (The site allows users to send messages that disappear on their own.)

The Clinton campaign seems totally oblivious to the seriousness of the investigation into her private email server.

It goes without saying that when you’ve got the Justice Department crawling through your emails, you’ve got real trouble. Making bad jokes about it or suggesting that the inquiry is just “politics” suggests a profound tone deafness or a fatal flaw in the campaign.

Clinton, as she showed then and has shown since, is not one to walk away. She embodies that all-American quip about the going getting tough and the tough getting going. But I just hope that there are those, somewhere in her entourage, who are even now begging her not to do it, and to bow out while there is still time to do so with grace.

Reality must be looked in the eye. Clinton is a hugely divisive figure, including within her own party – and not primarily because she is a woman. There is the clan question. What does it say about the meritocratic credentials of the United States that two of the most favoured candidates for 2016 are closely related to recent presidents? Neither is to blame but in my book, this alone would be a reason for both Clinton and Jeb Bush to leave the field. It is also a reason why they may not be electable…

Clinton’s chief liability, though, is the baggage she carries of her own. This includes the matter of that private email account she is claimed to have used professionally while secretary of state, and her handling of the murder of the US ambassador in Libya. The latter suggests a reluctance to accept ultimate responsibility, which is not a good recommendation for a president. The former suggests confusion about where to draw the line between the personal and the professional – a line more clearly drawn in US politics than here. Her explanations – most recently to reporters in Iowa, where she talked about “convenience” that turned out “to be not so convenient” – remain unsatisfactory and high-handed…

She can cite personal reasons (concerns about her husband’s health, for instance), or the hope that she has left time for another woman – the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, or the health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius – to run. But call it quits she should, unbeaten.

***

Using private servers helped shield her work product from the public and congressional committees trying to find out more about Benghazi. But her paranoia, and her arrogance, could also very well have put her country at risk…

And a candidate who puts their own politics over security — especially if that candidate is widely thought by voters to be untrustworthy — has a problem…

We will have elected an imperial personality who felt entitled to use private email for government business — email that, reportedly contained classified information including discussions on secret drone programs and other matters.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/22/quotes-of-the-day-2177/feed/5743874475Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/14/quotes-of-the-day-2170/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/14/quotes-of-the-day-2170/#commentsSat, 15 Aug 2015 00:01:17 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3873601Democrats are worried that the furor surrounding Hillary Clinton’s private email server will be prolonged and intensified after her sudden move to hand it over to the FBI…

“I’m not sure they completely understand the credibility they are losing, by the second,” said one Democratic strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “At some point this goes from being something you can rationalize away to something that becomes political cancer. And we are getting pretty close to the cancer stage, because this is starting to get ridiculous.”…

“It’s hard to imagine Americans in the heartland wondering about whether Hillary Clinton gave up an email server or not,” he said. “But [it adds to] this constant battering she’s taking, which is that people don’t trust her. It increases the feeling that something is not being told to them.”

John Fitzpatrick, head of the Information Security Oversight Office within the National Archives, said agencies train officials with security clearances to spot sensitive material and then to look up the proper classifications — such as “confidential,” “secret” or “top secret.”

“If you write an e-mail , you are expected to distinguish the classified from the unclassified,” Fitzpatrick said. “If you say ‘the CIA reports’ something — writing that sentence should set off alarm bells.”

Fitzpatrick said the dispute is somewhat academic given Clinton’s unique system. Officials shouldn’t rely on private systems for work e-mails, he said, and they should never talk about classified matters on a private system.

To track how the information flowed, agents will try to gain access to the email accounts of many State Department officials who worked there while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the officials said. State Department employees apparently circulated the emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011, and some were ultimately forwarded to Mrs. Clinton…

The F.B.I. is also trying to determine whether foreign powers, especially China or Russia, gained access to Mrs. Clinton’s private server, although at this point, any security breaches are speculation.

The DSS is an arm of the Defense Department and is the only federal agency authorized to approve private sector company access to sensitive or confidential material…

“The revelation that Secretary Clinton used a private company, Platte River Networks, to maintain her personal server raises questions about what steps the company took to preserve and secure sensitive information in Secretary Clinton’s email,” Johnson said.

***

Security experts say that if Hillary Rodham Clinton retained her government security clearance when she left the State Department, as is normal practice, it should be suspended now that it is known her unprotected private email server contained top secret material.

“Standard procedure is that when there is evidence of a security breach, the clearance of the individual is suspended in many, but not all, cases,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who was deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence in the George W. Bush administration. “This rises to the level of requiring a suspension.”…

“You have a massive spill, a massive leak of classified information,” the former official said. “The responsibility for that server is on Hillary Clinton directly.”…

“In my opinion, not only should she have any clearances rescinded, she should be prosecuted to a greater extent than Petraeus,” Mr. Bechtel said. “This blatant disregard for regulations and security is egregious. If she does not suffer severe consequences, it will demonstrate how corrupt the entire Obama administration is.”

A Fox News poll released Friday finds a 58 percent majority thinks Clinton “knowingly lied” when she announced in a March press conference that no emails on her private server contained classified information. A third says there is “another explanation” for internal government investigators determining secret info was in fact on Clinton’s server (33 percent).

Moreover, by a 54-37 percent margin, voters feel Clinton put our national security at risk by using a private email server.

***

In a poll of voters in the six make-or-break swing states, Hillary Clinton now trails a generic Republican opponent by 13 points – a jump from last month’s 8-point deficit…

The reason for Clinton’s decline with the swing-state general electorate is not hard to discern. Trust for Clinton waned notably since last month’s survey. In July, 41 percent of respondents expressed at least some degree of trust for the former secretary of state. This month, that’s fallen to 37 percent.

Distrust of Clinton, which clocked in at 56 percent last month has climbed all the way to 60 percent. It’s bad enough to be 23 points underwater on trustworthiness in general but maybe worst of all is that 47 percent this month said they “completely distrust” Clinton.

***

This is her fault, all of it.

Including her no-win situation. If the FBI is able to recover deleted email from her server, it’s almost certain that more classified documents will be discovered (given what has already been found in the tiny sample size). That would raise more questions about her judgment.

Furthermore, a thorough autopsy of the deleted email might lead to details about other embarrassing topics, such as Benghazi (a GOP fetish), or the intersection of Clinton Foundation donors and State Department business (“Follow the money,” a Democrat close to Clinton told me in March). Though this is pure speculation, her closest allies worry about what might be found.

The Democrats desperately need more serious, viable candidates in the race, or at least poised to jump in at a moment’s notice. (And it sure would be great if they were more appealing than Al Gore.) The point wouldn’t be to catch up to her in a mad dash. The point would be to serve as a strong back-up for when the nearly inevitable happens.

At the moment, the ongoing email imbroglio is the time bomb that seems to pose the greatest risk to the campaign. It’s hard to know which is most alarming: the way the candidate and her team have handled the scandal since it broke in March; the latest swirl of half-truths, denials, reversals, and revelations; or what new explosive information might come to light a month, six months, or a year from now…

Oh, that server we wouldn’t give to you? You can have it now, cleaned up all nice and tidy. There certainly weren’t any classified documents on there. Oh, there were? Oops, well, only those two — oh, I mean four — and don’t worry about how that’s just a “limited sample” of 40 emails out of tens of thousands; the inspector general of the Justice Department just got lucky. And hey, we deleted them, so who cares? (Freedom of information is for suckers.) Yes, of course, my “shadow” had access to that server and those classified emails, too. Why is that a problem? What, are you a member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?

While the FBI and Department of Justice have willfully ignored Hillary Clinton’s outrageous conduct, they didn’t hesitate a minute to investigate and prosecute former CIA Director and national hero, General Petraeus. He was just tarred, feathered and ridden out of the CIA on a rail for sharing some information (his own notebook) with his biographer who was both in the military and had a top secret clearance. Yet, Petraeus did not have a secret server set up to house his classified and top secret information or digital satellite imagery; he destroyed nothing; and, there was no “leak.” But that’s not all…

Ms. Clinton, however, established her entire system to avoid the law and in violation of the Espionage Act—as she and her co-conspirators removed all records from the State Department from its inception. Compounding her crimes, she knowingly and willfully destroyed whatever she wanted to destroy—despite or more likely because of—the incriminating information it contained and in the face of the Benghazi investigation…

Until there is a massive change in this country, justice is a game.

***

Hillary Clinton is a scandalous candidate for president of the United States. Most people acknowledge this, at least judging by her plummeting poll numbers. A raft of stories gives the distinct impression that she and her husband have been running an elaborate pay-to-play operation. Donations to the Clinton Foundation may have produced favorable State Department policies dealing with Russia-owned U.S. uranium deposits, Haitian relief efforts, and foreign banking interests. Her use of a personal email server while at the State Department, moreover, strongly suggests she has something to hide…

[W]ith Clinton, there is a wide array of questionable practices, dating back decades. There is Russia, Haiti, and UBS. There is the millions donated to the Clinton Foundation by a Ukrain­ian oligarch just before the Crimea crisis. There is the strange disappearance of the Rose Law Firm billing records. There is her huge windfall in the cattle futures market. There is the shady nature of her private email server. With each item, there could have been an unlikely accumulation of causes that made an innocent person look guilty. But it strains credulity to believe that such bizarre circumstances have conspired against her again and again and again. . . and again and again and again. Instead, one cannot help but return to William Safire’s judgment in 1996 that Clinton is just “a congenital liar.”…

Even for a Clinton, this is all very low and unseemly. Worse than that, it has jeopardized national security. Hillary has no explanation or valid defense. This should be “game over” for her presidential campaign. Her entourage of advisers and toadies should now focus on hiring an adept criminal-defense team.

But I very much doubt that will be the case. Her e-mail system was reckless, but her hubris surely arose in part from the knowledge that Hillary can expect dispensations from the sort of people who sit in federal prosecutors’ offices. This is particularly true of the grotesquely politicized Obama Department of Justice. They will bury this scandal, alongside the carcasses of the investigation into the IRS’s tea-party-targeting scandal, Operation Fast and Furious, and everything else this administration has suppressed.

As with her husband’s transgressions during his time in office, Hillary’s obvious violations of the law will probably be wiped away and largely forgotten. She is too important to the apparatus of governing elites and to the Left. The seized e-mail server, thumb drive, and whatever else the investigation sweeps up will disappear into the flabby folds of bureaucracy at the DOJ. There it will linger under a perpetual “review” that will stretch well beyond the 2016 election.

***

What Clinton needs most of all is a way out, a means of escape. Before she can recover politically, the legal uncertainty must end. And the only way to end it is a presidential pardon. Clinton’s future isn’t only tied to President Obama’s job approval and economic performance. It’s also tied to his compassion. Obama alone can resuscitate Hillary’s campaign…

Not only would a pardon have legal consequences. It would have political ones. It would be a tacit endorsement of Clinton, a message to Biden not to run. Scrutiny of Clinton would fade. A few news outlets might continue to dig around—we at the Washington Free Beacon will never, ever stop—but most reporters, who’d rather not be writing about this scandal anyway, would turn elsewhere.

Obama would look magnanimous. The country would be spared years of Clinton drama it doesn’t want. A pardon would be a final display of Obama’s moral superiority to the woman he defeated long ago—exactly the sort of self-righteous gesture that most appeals to him. As David Geffen put it in 2007, “I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person.” Nobody believed that about Clinton’s wife, either. They still don’t.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/14/quotes-of-the-day-2170/feed/4373873601Now more than ever: “Draft Biden” website launcheshttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/20/now-more-than-ever-draft-biden-website-launches/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/20/now-more-than-ever-draft-biden-website-launches/#commentsFri, 20 Mar 2015 18:41:17 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3646510As Ed Krayewski notes, he’s been in D.C. since Barack Obama was 11 years old, an unbroken stretch of influence over American decline that few politicians in U.S. history can match. Why shouldn’t he be the guy we put in charge to preside over the final collapse?

The economy. National security. Infrastructure. Education. These are just some of the issues our country faces going forward, with more challenges and opportunities added everyday. In this time of great change and uncertainty, America needs an experienced, steady hand on the wheel.

Vice President Joe Biden has more experience than any other candidate, or potential candidate, in the field. When he was elected to the Senate, he was one of the youngest Senators ever at twenty-nine. Now, with thirty-six years in Congress, and eight as Vice President, his institutional knowledge of the inner workings of Washington is unmatched.

His years of experience are complemented by his passion for the issues, particularly foreign policy. From helping pass the new START treaty to playing an important role in ending the Iraq War, he has been on the forefront of every foreign policy issue for decades. Concerning domestic policy, he’s focused on such key issues to our economy as affordable college and growth in the manufacturing industry.

Lotta ink has been spilled lately about how weird and unprecedented it is (in modern times, at least) for Democrats to have a prohibitive presidential frontrunner, capable of clearing the field, who’s not an incumbent president or VP herself. What makes that doubly weird, though, is the fact that the current VP, seen by many as a punchline, would instantly become a very credible candidate for them the moment Hillary says “I’ll pass.” How often does that happen? Who was the last guy to run for president who went from clown (albeit well-credentialed clown) to possible frontrunner literally overnight? And what makes this triply weird is that, on paper, Diamond Joe’s really not that bad of a pick, even apart from the advantage of name recognition that comes with incumbency. Go read Larry Sabato’s assessment of John Kerry as a potential Democratic dark horse candidate and ask yourself in which way he’s superior to Biden. They’re both extremely old by presidential standards, both have a showy (yet terrible) record on foreign policy, and unlike Kerry, Biden doesn’t have the taint of having lost a general election before. He’s at least as formidable as Kerry and certainly more formidable, if only for structural reasons, than a dial tone like Martin O’Malley. The only Democrat out there who might be able to bump him off in a Hillary-less race is Elizabeth Warren, and I’m not so sure even she could do it. The left will prefer her, but what about centrist Democrats and blue-collar voters who know Biden well and like him for his down-to-earth charm?

All I’m saying is it’s not capital-C Crazy that he might run and win and that we on the right might commit mass suicide afterward upon realizing that we couldn’t stop Joe Biden — Joe Biden — from being elected to Obama’s third term.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/20/now-more-than-ever-draft-biden-website-launches/feed/423646510Jen Psaki: We have no record of Hillary signing a separation agreement when she left Statehttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/17/jen-psaki-we-have-no-record-of-hillary-signing-a-separation-agreement-when-she-left-state/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/17/jen-psaki-we-have-no-record-of-hillary-signing-a-separation-agreement-when-she-left-state/#commentsTue, 17 Mar 2015 18:41:41 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3606405So there you go. The mystery is solved. Hillary avoids a perjury charge for failing to turn over her work e-mails in a timely way because she never formally agreed to make herself accountable in the first place. What a perfectly Clintonian ending to “National Treasure 3: The Search for Hillary’s OF-109.” In fact, I’ll cop here to grudgingly respecting her political acumen in knowing from the start that she could take a steamy dump on every good-government norm of basic recordkeeping without the public batting an eye. That’s the ultimate privilege of being a Clinton: Corruption is assumed, so every discrete act of further corruption carries only the most marginal sting. She and Bill have fed the electorate so much scandal poison, bit by bit, over the past 20 years that we’re now resistant to even massive doses. It’s her version of Joe Biden saying weird, off-color things that would sink any other politician. “Biden made another joke about Indian-Americans running 7-Elevens? Oh, that Joe.” “Hillary and her aides conspired to obstruct justice by concealing their correspondence from federal recordkeepers? Oh, those Clintons.”

While State’s Foreign Affairs Manual declares that “a separation statement will be completed whenever an employee is terminating employment,” Psaki insisted that Clinton’s departure without signing the form didn’t run afoul of any directive.

“We’re not aware of any penalty for not signing it,” Psaki said. “It’s not a violation of any rule.”

Psaki claims here that they don’t have OF-109s from Colin Powell or Condi Rice either. I’d be interested in hearing from them whether that’s true and, if so, why. Watch the second clip and you’ll see Josh Earnest admit that even senior staff at the White House are required to go through the formal separation process when they leave, although he’s unclear about whether Obama and Biden themselves go through it. It’s bizarre that lower level staffers at State would be bound to cough up their e-mails for archival/accountability purposes but not the head of the department, whose dealings are the most consequential to foreign policy. What kind of accountability norm regards disclosure as less important from an official with more responsibility? That’s question one for the now inevitable Senate/House hearings on the State Department’s rolling recordkeeping clusterfark.

Exit quotation from Mark Hemingway: “Some journalist should show up at Hillary’s next presser with an OF-109 form and ask her to sign it right then and there.”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/17/jen-psaki-we-have-no-record-of-hillary-signing-a-separation-agreement-when-she-left-state/feed/1843606405North Carolina poll: Ben Carson leads GOP field with 19%, leads Biden by four head to headhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/15/north-carolina-ben-carson-leads-gop-field-with-19-leads-biden-by-four-points-head-to-head/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/15/north-carolina-ben-carson-leads-gop-field-with-19-leads-biden-by-four-points-head-to-head/#commentsTue, 16 Dec 2014 02:21:31 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=2665677Sounds impressive until you realize that Biden’s currently rocking two percent of the vote nationally in a Democratic primary involving Hillary and Elizabeth Warren. Speaking of which, Ben Carson against Hillary in North Carolina: Dead even at 44, which is two points better than Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee do against her.

The Romney/Carson last-men-standing primary debate before Super Tuesday will be epic, my friends.

Ben Carson leads the way for the Republicans with 19% to 15% for Jeb Bush, 14% each for Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee, 11% for Paul Ryan, 7% for Rick Perry, 5% each for Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, and 4% for Marco Rubio…

At least at this very early stage it looks like North Carolina will yet again be a swing state in 2016 if Clinton is indeed the Democrat nominee. She is very closely matched with all of her potential Republican opponents, leading Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie each by 2 points at 46/44 and 44/42 respectively, while tying Bush and Carson at 46% and 44% respectively. Those numbers show there isn’t a big electability difference between the Republican candidates at least at this point. We also tested Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren in head to head match ups with Bush and Carson, and they fare a good bit worse than Clinton. Biden trails Bush 47/42 and Carson 45/40, while Warren trails Bush 46/39 and Carson 44/37.

The fact that Carson is even registering in these polls, let alone leading them, is amazing. How’s he doing that? I’m tempted to say it’s because of his appearances on Fox News over the past year but Huckabee’s gotten a lot more airtime on FNC than Carson has and he’s a few points behind. There must be a strong grassroots effort there by the “Draft Ben Carson” PAC to drum up interest. That’s not surprising, if so — Vernon Robinson, the group’s political director, knows the state well as a NC native — but the fact that that grassroots outreach is working as well as it is does surprise me.

Now, you tell me. Who’s most likely to suffer from the Carson boomlet? Note the “very conservative” column:

Ted Cruz at nine percent while Carson is at 18? Given that Jeb Bush(!) and Mike Huckabee(!!) are outpolling him among the same demographic, let’s chalk that up to “very conservative” voters merely not knowing Cruz well enough yet to form an opinion rather than actively passing him over. Still, though — they know Ben Carson well enough to form an opinion? Huh.

This caught my eye too. Which number jumps out?

The only candidate to register above 20 percent in any age group is Carson, who pulls a quarter of senior citizens. Presumably they’re a key target of the “Draft Ben Carson” group, which makes sense — Carson spends a lot of time talking about faith and opposing political correctness and there’s no age group more comprehensively socially conservative than seniors. Some of that support will fade as the rest of the field starts campaigning and other candidates land on voters’ radars, but again, it’s instructive to look at Huckabee here. He’s a known quantity, having run for president once before and spent years with his own show on Fox. There’s no major politician in the country who’s spent more effort polishing his brand as a social conservative. And yet Carson’s nearly 10 points ahead of him among a group that should be easy pickings for Huck. (Huckabee is second among senior citizens behind Carson, in fact.) I still think Carson’s a single-digit candidate when everything shakes out, but could he play spoiler for a more formidable social con in the race like Huck or Cruz? A few months ago I’d have said “no way.” Let’s revise that down now to “probably not.”

One more data point. Of the four GOP candidates polled — Carson, Huckabee, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie — only one of them has a favorable rating among fellow Republicans north of 65 percent. Ahem:

Good lord. Mike Huckabee won the war on women, at least in North Carolina.

Here’s Carson reaching out to his would-be base in a segment last week for David Brody and CBN.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/15/north-carolina-ben-carson-leads-gop-field-with-19-leads-biden-by-four-points-head-to-head/feed/562665677Semi-retired president: “I spend most of my time watching ESPN in the morning”http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/12/semi-retired-president-i-spend-most-of-my-time-watching-espn-in-the-morning/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/12/semi-retired-president-i-spend-most-of-my-time-watching-espn-in-the-morning/#commentsFri, 12 Dec 2014 19:01:06 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=2628898Via the Free Beacon, alternate headline: “Semi-retired president now fully retired.” Makes me wonder if he isn’t secretly bummed that House Democrats didn’t finish off his presidency last night on the cromnibus vote. Had he gone down in flames there, he really could have spent the next two years watching ESPN all day.

The best part of this comment is that somewhere Hillary’s listening to it, absorbing it as a lesson on how more skilled retail politicians relate to the average joe. Already looking forward to her claiming on the trail in 2016 that she watches “EPSN” a lot too.

One of the tragedies of the Obama era is that we ended up with Mr. SportsCenter as commander-in-chief when there’s a true man of action very close indeed to the presidency. Imagine this guy staring down Putin:

“I remember coming back from Mass on Sunday,” Biden began. “Always the big treat was, we’d stop at the donut shop…We’d get donuts, and my dad would wait in the car. As I was coming out, my sister [Valerie] tugged on me and said, ‘That’s the boy who kicked me off my bicycle.’”

“So I went home—we only lived about a quarter mile away—and I got on my bicycle and rode back, and he was in the donut shop.”

Biden remembered the boy was in a physically vulnerable position: “leaning down on one of those slanted counters.”

Sensing his opportunity, Joey Biden pounced: “I walked up behind him and smashed his head next to the counter.”

“I’m not recommending it,” he added.

“His father grabbed me, and I looked at his son and said, ‘If you ever touch my sister again, I’ll come back here again and I’ll kill your son.'”

We could have had this guy, Scranton’s answer to Liam Neeson’s character in “Taken,” as leader of the free world. Instead we got the head of the Choom Gang. Decline is a choice, America.

Exit question: Remember when the media decided that Mitt Romney supposedly forcibly cutting a classmate’s hair was a searing insight into his character? How would they have handled a story about Mitt slamming a kid’s head into a wall and then threatening to kill him in front of his dad?

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/12/semi-retired-president-i-spend-most-of-my-time-watching-espn-in-the-morning/feed/1092628898Joe Biden 2012: Can you believe Mitt Romney wants to hit Syria?http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/23/joe-biden-2012-can-you-believe-mitt-romney-wants-to-hit-syria/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/23/joe-biden-2012-can-you-believe-mitt-romney-wants-to-hit-syria/#commentsTue, 23 Sep 2014 17:21:46 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=1288135Via the Corner, an amazing clip — even more amazing than when it first made the rounds a year ago, when Obama announced that he wanted to bomb the opposite side of the conflict in Syria from the one we began bombing last night. In the year since, literally every Romney 2012 position mocked by Biden in the clip below has turned out to be prescient. Romney said it was a mistake to bring everyone home from Iraq. Verdict: Yep, pretty much. Romney said we should be more confrontational and less cooperative with Russia. Verdict: You tell me. Romney implied he’d intervene in Syria to keep chemical weapons out of the hands of jihadis. Verdict: President “Red Lines” adopted the same position less than a year later. Romney claimed it was a mistake to set a date for total withdrawal from Afghanistan. Verdict: The jury’s out but I know which way I’m betting. The only detail here that hasn’t come to pass and likely won’t is what Biden says about Romney allegedly wanting war with Iran, but in reality Romney’s policy during the campaign wasn’t appreciably different from Obama’s. Funny though it may seem now, Obama took a hawkish line on Iranian nuclear weapons in both of his presidential campaigns, not unlike how he opposed gay marriage in 2008: No one believed he was sincere in either case but the pretense shielded him from a lot of political heat. Fast-forward to 2014 and the White House is now reduced to begging Iran to disconnect some of the pipes attached to their uranium centrifuges in lieu of removing the centrifuges themselves, just so that Obama can claim that Iran’s nuclear program has been kinda sorta taken offline if you squint hard and try not to think about it too much.

All of which is to say, what you’re watching here is not just an unusually vivid reminder of what a schmuck Biden is. You’re watching to see how arrogant he and Obama are in their schmuckiness. It’s not enough to get literally everything wrong; you need to be can-you-believe-this-guy contemptuous of your opponent in doing so for maximum effect. Exit quotation from Bob Gates, writing in his memoir about the man who’s one heartbeat away from leading the free world: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/23/joe-biden-2012-can-you-believe-mitt-romney-wants-to-hit-syria/feed/731288135Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/03/quotes-of-the-day-1841/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/03/quotes-of-the-day-1841/#commentsThu, 04 Sep 2014 02:21:28 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=989669At first, the president offered what seemed to be an unambiguous goal. “The bottom line is this: Our objective is clear and that is to degrade and destroy ISIL so it is no longer a threat,” he said…

But when ABC News Radio White House correspondent Ann Compton today asked the president to clarify whether the United States now wants ISIS destroyed, the president seemed to significantly backtrack.

“Our objective is to make sure they aren’t an ongoing threat to the region,” he said.

Then, in response to another question, he seemed to backtrack even further: “We know that if we are joined by the international community, we can continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its military capability to the point where it is a manageable problem.”

***

A harsher, but still accurate, description is that Obama strategy boils down to nudging Iraqis and Syrians to decide, on their own, to take the hard but necessary steps to solve this on their own. But since this depends so much on local actors cooperating — and a seemingly magical end to the Syrian civil war — there’s nothing like a guarantee that it’ll succeed.

In either reading, this is a reasonable strategy. It is controversial, and there’s nothing that ensures it’ll work, but it’s something. So that’s why it’s so problematic to see Obama’s comments this week suggesting that the US has a very different, much more aggressive strategy of seeking to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Vice President Joe Biden’s comments on Wednesday that the US will follow ISIS “to the gates of Hell” did not help.

This suggests that the administration has two contradictory strategic approaches — that American efforts should be aimed at helping Syrians and Iraqis solve this, but also that the US should immediately and unilaterally degrade the ISIS threat — that can work at cross-purposes. The administration seems to think the latter serves the former, but there’s a risk that the US is sending mixed messages to the Iraqis and Syrians. The more America talks about wanting to destroy ISIS, the more Iraqis and Syrians think the US might be planning to take the military and political lead.

***

“ISIL poses a direct and significant threat to us” and “has the potential to use its safe haven to plan and coordinate attacks in Europe and the United States,” [National Counterterror Center director Matthew] Olsen said, speaking at an event hosted by the Brookings Institute. But he said the group is not as capable of carrying out a large-scale attack as al Qaeda was before 9/11, Olsen said…

Around 100 Americans have traveled to fight with ISIS, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, has said while even more have traveled to Syria from Europe. Olsen estimated 12,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria to fight against Assad’s regime in the last three years…

The threat exists of a lone wolf, radicalized by ISIS, carrying out an attack on his or her own in the U.S., Olsen said. Such an attack would be “limited” in scope and “smaller scale” than the scale of the 9/11 attacks launched by al Qaeda.

***

Many Christians seem befuddled when responding to atrocities like beheadings and systematic, deadly persecution — conflicted between the desire to protect the innocent and “do justice” yet feeling as if that somehow violates commands like “turn the other cheek.” But we are not commanded to make sure that others turn their cheeks. Indeed, compelling helplessness and vulnerability is a grave affront to a nation’s citizens. Pacifism — which is nothing more than compelled helplessness — is thus the worst possible response to attack, not just tactically and strategically stupid in secular terms but also a direct abdication of a sacred responsibility.

“In no way have I said that we shouldn’t do anything about ISIS. In fact, I have said that I would call a joint session of Congress if I was president,” [Sen. Rand] Paul told Sean Hannity on his radio show Wednesday. “I would bring Congress back from the recess and would tell them why ISIS is a threat and I would ask for the legislative permission that goes with the Constitution in order to take care of them militarily.”

In the interview, Paul said he believes Congressional approval is “appropriate” and could pass overwhelmingly. Paul also said Iran, Syria, and Turkey be “enjoined” in fighting ISIS because they have the ability, means, and incentive to do so.

“Right now, the two allies that have the same goal would be Iran and Syria, to wipe out ISIS. They also have the means and the ability and they also have the incentive to do so because Assad’s clinging for power and clinging for life there,” Paul said. “So I also think that Turks really should be enjoined in this. And I do think that there can be a role for America. But I would rather see the president come to a joint session of Congress, asks for permission, and if he gets it, I still would like to see the ground troops and the battles being fought by those who live there. We can give both technological as well as air support. That could be the decisive factor in this.”

***

The same has also always been true of the ideological/doctrinal divide between Sunni and Shiite jihadists. For example, al-Qaeda has had cooperative and operational relations with Iran since the early 1990s. Iran collaborated with al-Qaeda in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 U.S. airmen; probably in the 9/11 attacks; certainly in the aftermath of 9/11; and in the Iraq and Afghan insurgencies. Al-Qaeda would not be what it is today without state sponsorship, particularly from Iran. The Islamic State might not exist at all.

The point is that al-Qaeda has never been anything close to the totality of the jihadist threat. Nor, now, is the Islamic State. The challenge has always been Islamic supremacism: the ideology, the jihadists that are the point of the spear, and the state sponsors that enable jihadists to project power. The challenge cannot be met effectively by focusing on one element to the exclusion of others.

Have a look, for instance, at Bill Roggio’s report today (also in the Long War Journal): In helping Iraqi forces wrest Amerli from the Islamic State, the U.S. Air Force colluded with Iran-backed Shiite terrorist groups, including the League of the Righteous, responsible for the killing of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq. The switch in dominion over territory from anti-American Sunni jihadists to anti-American Shiite jihadists is a setback for the Islamic State, but it does not advance American national security. In fact, it would become a real negative for American national security if it contributed to a revival of the dangerous fantasy that Iran has a helpful, “stabilizing” role to play in rolling back the terrorist threat — a fantasy to which the Obama administration is far from unique in subscribing.

***

“There is a mystical belief that, if you just establish the caliphate in the right way, Muslims will come to you and everything will fall into place,” says Fred Donner, a historian of early Islam at the University of Chicago. And it is precisely this promise of inexorable, righteous expansion that has drawn recruits from all over the globe—not just nearby, war-ravaged nations, but England and Australia and France, too. Together, they have formed the most monstrous squad of historical reenactors of all time…

So how do we fight ISIS? Giving Baghdadi more time as caliph might only make him more plausible in the role and allow him to draw more fighters to his state. If that is true, one concerned Western scholar told me, we would be wise to kill him fast. Right now only an infinitesimal number of Muslims have sworn fealty to him. The biggest danger is letting that number grow. Once he becomes a popular figure instead of a divisive one, his death will have spillover effects. “Killing the religious leader of even a small minority of Muslims is not good propaganda,” says Cole Bunzel.

But a massive invasion by the United States would have equally deplorable effects, because it would instantly convert Baghdadi’s squalid army into the world’s premier terrorist organization. A balanced and effective approach, then, would be to kill him as fast as possible and to use Kurdish and Shia proxies to arrest his state’s expansion. By confining U.S. action to surgical raids and proxy war, we might avoid accidentally anointing him or his successor Grand Poobah of the Mujahedin.

***

My reading of Iraq and Afghanistan is that we nearly got there in Iraq until President Obama abandoned efforts to secure a lasting U.S. troop presence and pulled out all troops in 2011. A residual U.S. troops presence would not have solved Iraq’s political problems but would have given us leverage for continued bargaining and almost certainly would have blunted IS’s growth and prevented the current emergency. The failings of 2003 to 2007 were failings of planning, management, oversight, and coordination, which the United States painfully and slowly improved at the cost of thousands of lives.

In other words, we tried the right thing, but the United States is far less capable of doing the right thing than is widely appreciated — not because our military isn’t capable, but because it isn’t useful for the kinds of things we need to accomplish. For that, we need different tools — the tools of reconstruction, stabilization, coercion, political pressure, diplomacy, the whole package. This is an emotionally unsatisfying explanation because it is complicated and doesn’t come wrapped in a tidy Tweetable moralistic bow (like “Bush lied, people died!” or “nation building is hubris!”).

But it is true. If you want to see the next four presidential administrations lob bombs at Iraq and Mali and Somalia and Pakistan with no end in sight, then our military is well equipped to do the job, and we will live in a world of forever war. If you want a just and lasting peace among nations, our military cannot build it alone. Some sort of broader, messy, and complicated intervention — by the United States, the U.N., NATO, the Arab League, the African Union, someone — will have to be part of it. “Not meddling” isn’t a foreign policy.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/03/quotes-of-the-day-1841/feed/403989669Should Kirsten Gillibrand name the senator who told her “I like my girls chubby”?http://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/29/should-kirsten-gillibrand-name-the-senator-who-told-her-i-like-my-girls-chubby/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/29/should-kirsten-gillibrand-name-the-senator-who-told-her-i-like-my-girls-chubby/#commentsFri, 29 Aug 2014 21:21:39 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=910711From the standpoint of pure self-interest, a thousand times yes. Are you kidding? I can wring three solid days of content from it if the mystery lech is Harry Reid or Joe Biden.

But there’s another reason Gillibrand shouldn’t reveal the name of the colleague who told her not to lose weight because “I like my girls chubby.” It’s a total power move. She knows who they are. They know she knows. Checkmate.

Which means somewhere on Capitol Hill, the hapless male Senator who called Gillibrand “porky” is probably cowering in his office, running that interaction in his head over and over again. “How can I spin this?” he’s thinking, “Could I make this about Michelle Obama’s fat-kids-thing? Could I say I was making a point about pork-barrel spending? Where is Olivia Pope when you need her?” Sweat is pouring off his brow, he’s wiping his forehead with his red-and-blue tie, he’s trying desperately to remember whether he pinched her arm or her butt that one time in the House gym. If Gillibrand exposes him, he’ll have a tough time winning over pretty big portion of the electorate: women (more than 50% of the U.S. population) and fat people (more than a third of all Americans.)

Suddenly, a text appears on his phone. “Hey Porker” and then, as a quick follow-up, “;)” He’s in Gillibrand’s house now.

That’s Charlotte Alter at Time, imagining Gillibrand blackmailing the mystery senator into supporting a bill to “protect contraceptive rights.” Could work, but why stop there? Why not blackmail him into supporting some especially stupid and wasteful pork projects for New York too? It’s convenient to this scenario to imagine her deploying her strategy only in service to selfless feminist or liberal causes rather than the more prosaic business that helps politicians get reelected. I strongly suspect she’s telling the truth about the “I like my girls chubby” incident; I also think government by blackmail is a bad idea, even when practiced at the expense of its more cretinous members.

Another argument from Amanda Marcotte is that it’s pointless for Gillibrand to name and shame the guy who harassed her because it’ll just devolve into a he-said-she-said thing and “people will take sides and tempers will flare” and she’ll be called a nutty slutty slut nut, etc etc etc. Show of hands: Anyone believe that? Some people will be skeptical of her story, it’s true; there are differences of opinion on every question in American political life. But Gillibrand’s extremely well positioned to have most people believe her. The sheer weight of the allegation, one U.S. senator accusing another of harassment, would suggest to fencesitters that it wasn’t made lightly. The media would be on her side too, as some of them have personal experience with this sort of thing from older male senators. And of course, partisan politics being what it is, Gillibrand would start with roughly 50 percent of the public backing her up depending upon which party the accused belongs to. Toss in the fact that voters hate Congress generally and have long memories about Bob Packwood and the “waitress sandwich” tandem of Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd and sure, Gillibrand’s claim seems entirely plausible. Why do you think news junkies took such an interest in it when the “chubby” incident was reported earlier this week?

The reason some lefties aren’t keen on her to name names, of course, is because the guy who allegedly harassed her is also allegedly one of her favorite senators, which implies that he’s a Democrat. And the very last thing Democrats need right now is a circular firing squad with two members of the party in the middle. Anyway, here are Scarborough and Brzezinski making the case that Gillibrand should, in fact, identify her harasser so that his constituents know what he’s up to and so that other women in and around the Senate don’t have to put up with the same nonsense going forward. How many aides and pages has this guy harassed while Gillibrand was keeping the “chubby” anecdote close to the vest? At the very least, if she’s resolved not to confront this person publicly, she could have had it leaked to the media to put the guy on everyone’s radar and then issued a perfunctory denial so that it couldn’t be traced back to her. Why include it in her book at all if she’s only going to cover for him by not naming him? If anything, that signals that it was really no big deal, an infraction that was annoying but not so alarming as to warrant the public’s full attention.

Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring.

In the past several weeks, Jarrett has held a series of secret meetings with Warren. During these meetings, Jarrett has explained to Warren that Obama is worried that if Hillary succeeds him in the White House, she will undo many of his policies.

He believes that the populist Warren is the best person to convince the party faithful that Hillary is out of touch with poor Americans and the middle class. Warren, in his view, would carry on the Obama legacy after he leaves the White House…

“Both Valerie and Michelle Obama have convinced the president that Elizabeth Warren is his Mini-Me,” said a person who has discussed the issue with Jarrett.

That’s from Edward Klein, who, coincidentally, has a new book out right now featuring this very anecdote. (When he asked a Democratic operative for comment about Obama and Warren, the reply came back, “It’s all bullsh*t.”) First obvious question: When was the last time an incumbent president bypassed his own secretary of state — and VP, if Biden’s serious about running — to support a longshot ideologue in a primary? Second, more substantive obvious question: Which Obama policies would President Hillary “undo”? She might be more hawkish than him but no one thinks she’s going back into Afghanistan or, gasp, Iraq. She certainly wouldn’t repeal ObamaCare. And, for obvious reasons, she’s even more eager than lame-duck O is to pander to Latino voters, ensuring that she’d follow his expansionist lead on amnesty. Which other major Obama initiatives are there beyond those for her to conceivably threaten? The punchline here is that the Clintons are hunting around for a platform or “big idea” to run on and the most likely option is — ta da — Elizabeth Warren’s. Framing her candidacy as a quasi-populist crusade against income inequality helps Hillary in all sorts of ways: It’ll soothe the left in the primaries, mask the Clintons’ establishment stink, and give them a “serious” prefab narrative for the general election to distract from Hillary’s lack of distinction as a policymaker. (The real narrative of the campaign, of course, is “First! Woman! President!”, but Democrats will want to pretend they’re offering something more substantive than that.) Even if Obama preferred Warren’s agenda to Hillary’s non-agenda, what savvy pol wouldn’t prefer to have Warrenism incorporated into the Clinton brand at the top of the ticket rather than rolling the dice on Warren herself?

The silliest thing about this is that, of the two of them, Warren would be much more likely to run against Obama’s record than Hillary would. Hillary’s stuck with O’s foreign policy and, as a former cabinet member, can’t be too harsh in attacking him on domestic policy. Warren can attack him full force, though — that’s the whole reason the left’s eager for her to run. She can make the purist liberal critique of O’s centrist failures, starting with financial reform, that the Clintons can’t. For Obama to prefer Warren to Hillary, he’d have to be so disgusted at the meagerness of his own legacy that he’d want the next nominee to call him a failure rather than defend that legacy as a success worth building on. Ideologue though he is, does he strike you as the sort of guy whose ego would permit him to do that?

BuzzFeed has other excerpts from Klein’s book, my favorite of which involves Hillary allegedly calling O an MFer while sipping wine at a luncheon with Wellesley alumnae. Sounds legit. And speaking of books, apparently no one is reading Hillary’s. Because why would you? It’s a pre-campaign souvenir, something to be displayed on your shelf a la an “I Like Ike” button circa 1952, not something to be read.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/07/the-obligatory-obama-supposedly-backing-elizabeth-warren-over-hillary-in-2016-post/feed/131338487Breaking: Senate defeats controversial Obama nominee to head DOJ’s civil rights divisionhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/03/05/breaking-senate-defeats-controversial-obama-nominee-to-head-dojs-civil-rights-division/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/03/05/breaking-senate-defeats-controversial-obama-nominee-to-head-dojs-civil-rights-division/#commentsWed, 05 Mar 2014 18:21:58 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=299706Wait a sec. Didn’t Harry Reid nuke the filibuster for presidential appointees a few months ago? Why, indeed he did, which means Republicans had no hope of stopping this confirmation by themselves. They’d need at least six Democrats to cross the aisle to get to 51 no’s. And given how humiliating that would be for The One, no one expected it to happen. Joe Biden was apparently standing by in the chamber today to provide the 51st yes, just in case five Dems got cold feet and the final tally ended up 50/50.

Eight Democrats voted no, although Reid was among them only to preserve his ability to move to reconsider the nomination later if need be. Nomination defeated.

Six of the key seven there make sense: Casey, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Manchin, Pryor, and Walsh are all either red- or purple-staters and therefore leery of cuddling up to a guy who’s known for having defended Mumia Abu-Jamal. Coons is the outlier. He’s from deep-blue Delaware and doesn’t face reelection for another two years. They didn’t even need his vote ultimately to kill the nomination. Can’t wait to find out what that’s about. Could be that the shooting of Daniel Faulkner was simply too close to home: It happened in Philadelphia, just across the border from Delaware. Delawareans may be liberal on most issues, but not quite all.

Another surprise is some of the red-state Democrats who did vote yes, including/especially red-staters who are up in November. What on earth were Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan, who’s rocking a 33 percent approval rating these days in North Carolina, thinking? Better yet, what were Obama and Reid thinking in forcing people like Landrieu and Hagan to choke on this vote when they weren’t sure they had 51 in the bank to confirm? Why not just pull the nomination and admit defeat? Something’s up here. Did a bunch of Democrats surprise Reid by switching at the last second? Or maybe Reid knew that some were on the fence but figured that they’d never, ever stab Obama in the back if he called their bluff and made them vote on it. Surprise.